News
Barclays VIP Visits Young People's Money Management Project
18 September 2012
A group of young people from Haringey had the opportunity to showcase an innovative peer education project to senior executives and employees from Barclays.
The Barclays Money Skills ‘champions’ project supports young people to build their financial skills and provides them with training to enable them to share their financial knowledge with their peers. Barclays Money Skills ‘champions’ is delivered by a consortium of leading youth and information charities, led by the National Youth Agency, working in partnership with local delivery agencies including Haringey's Education2Day.
Guglielmo Sartori di Borgoricco, Global Head of Distribution for Barclays Capital, visited the project at Education 2Day, where groups of young people are being trained as peer educators - known as Barclays Money Skillls ‘champions’.
Mr Borgoricco said: “It was inspiring to meet these young people who are committed not only to improving their own financial knowledge, but also sharing their new skills with their friends and peers.
“Managing money is an essential life skill, and making good financial decisions helps to improve life opportunities and prepare for a secure future. We hope that by training these 'champions' to be peer educators we will be able to support up to 100,000 young people, including many who would otherwise be hard to reach.
One of the ‘champions’, Iriesha Deb, aged 18, said: “This project has really helped me to understand more about money. I have been able to identify lots of ways I was wasting money – and the project has shown me that by making a few small changes I can make big savings”
The ‘champions’ also met two young people who have recently started the Barclays apprenticeships programme, Shelbie Sinclair from Barking and Tyrone Apaloo-Taylor from Poplar, who are now working towards qualifications in Financial Services as part of their training.
Guglielmo and the Barclays apprentices participated in a training session with the Haringey ‘champions’ called ‘Learning the lingo’, designed to give participants a better understanding of common financial terms and their meaning, and to understand the implications of not getting to grips with these terms.
Rob Garrett, support worker at Education2Day, said: “The programme is going fantastically well, and the young people are finding it very interesting and beneficial in terms of how they manage their money. It was great to have a senior representative of Barclays visit our project, and come and get involved with our ‘champions’.”
Barclays Money Skills ‘champions’ aims to recruit 5,000 ‘champions’ nationwide, who will eventually spread their money skills to up to 100,000 of their peers.
